Don’t get itchy fingers (AKA be wary of FOMO buying). As noted above, if you have a strategy, stick with it. Sometimes the market will go nuts, and you’ll see epic gains, and you’ll get FOMO (all humans get FOMO, it takes discipline not to react to it). Selling or buying at that time may make sense, but don’t get nervous and switch up your whole strategy without thinking about it. That is often when bad moves are made. If you are going to buy heavily or sell heavily on a whim, consider taking a step back first.
Created by Charlie Lee, a former Google engineer, Litecoin is an open-source payment network that operates on a global scale. It is not controlled by any centralized power, and it uses the “scrypt” as proof-of-work. It is similar to Bitcoin but has the advantage of offering a faster rate of generation and therefore faster transactions. This is one of the main reasons why its enthusiasts continue to invest or hold onto the coin even after finding out that its founder sold his stack.
Binance are relatively new on the block but are poised to become the biggest digital asset exchange service available. Crucially, Binance are likely to eventually limit the number of users they take on, much like some of the other exchanges, so I recommend opening a Binance account today even if you don’t use it anytime soon – then you at least have the option.

I think the simplest place to buy, sell, and store coins is Coinbase (and our tutorial below will help you get set up with that), but you can only buy, sell, and store Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash on Coinbase. If you are serious about trading cryptocurrency, you’ll need another exchange like Coinbase’s GDAX, Bittrex, Binance, or Kraken (and you’ll likely want to find a wallet to store your coins in). See a top 5 list of cryptocurrency exchanges and the Best Bitcoin Exchanges ranked (those above are my picks).

Many governments are unsure of what to class cryptocurrencies as, currency or property. The U.S in 2014 introduced cryptocurrency trading rules that mean digital currencies will fall under the umbrella of property. Traders will then be classed as investors and will have to conform to complex reporting requirements. Details of which can be found by heading to the IRS notice 2014-21.
Major Altcoins have the most volume traded again the USD. Thus, analyzing graphs of those Altcoins should be done whilst comparing them to their Bitcoin graph and their dollar value graph. Here on CryptoPotato we make sure we do that for our weekly market reports. If we were solely analyzing the Bitcoin value chart, we would surely miss the accumulation period of Ethereum by roughly $300 (recall $300 of Bitcoin accumulation back in 2015?). At the time of writing Ethereum is trading a month later, for more than $1000 for one Ether.

If you choose to keep some stored on an exchange or a website such as Coinbase, then ensure you complete a full security setup and ALWAYS setup Two Factor Authentication, I recommend using Google Authenticator for this and not SMS Two Factor Authentication as your phone can be compromised by hackers. Google Authenticator creates a random number string each time you log in to protect yourself in case someone can get hold of your username and password.

No, the successful trader is not me. I’ve gotten lucky a few times and I’m still refining and trying out strategies; on the other hand, I’m part of communities of people who trade on a daily basis to grow their portfolios, and while some of the results can be attributed to luck, a majority of it is based on fundamentals, good habits, and experience.